Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. Offending the Audience (A) Offending the Audience, originally written in 1960, and here conceived by Christian Lapoint, is, if nothing else, an experience. An extended, poetic, contradictory monologue, the piece is, for the most part, an hour of taking the rules of theatre and […]
Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. Like There’s No Tomorrow (A+) Like There’s No Tomorrow tells the story of the Northern Gateway Project, and it effect on people on First Nations’ communities in Northern British Columia. Based on interviews conducted by Architect Theatre in 2012 and 2013, Like There’s No […]
Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. Upon the Fragile Shore (B+) Upon The Fragile Shore explores a number of human tragedies, from the Boston Marathon Bombing to the struggles in Syria. The strength the showis in its performers: a virtuosic, talented group that exemplify what can be done with movement, […]
As I walked out of Ballad of the Burning Star Tuesday night at the Theatre Centre, I ran into a friend walking into another show (Burnish, I believe). When he asked what Ballad was about, I said, with a kind of syncopated energy: “well, it’s a devised theatre piece, but it’s also very movement based, like […]
Dennis Potter’s Brimstone and Treacle was considered controversial when it was first written in 1976. Much has changed in the past 40 years, and yet this is still a controversial play in terms of its depiction of sexual violence and the performance of disability. As such, the question why stage this play was at the […]
“I wanted to write about obsession, about creativity, about risk-taking, about love and loss,” playwright Carolyn Smart writes about Hooked, now playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. Certainly all of these elements and more are present in this intimate montage of the lives of 7 women. This eclectic one-woman show exemplifies not only the […]
way·ward (wāwərd) adjective difficult to control or predict because of unusual or perverse behavior. “I’m so glad you’ve taken an interest in our farm,” director Becky Johnson exclaims in character at the top of Cult Wayward, the all-female improv show at the Bag Dog Theatre. This new addition in the Wayward series did not disappoint: […]
John Patrick Shanley’s A Woman is A Secret opened at the Theatre Centre last Friday to an enthusiastic audience. Though what brought audiences to their feet at the end of the show is not clear to me. For while A Woman is a Secret was beautifully staged, actors were bogged down by Shanley’s overly poetic […]